Gary's Third Pottery Blog

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Gary's third pottery blog

WRITE TO ME! garyrith@yahoo.com Come see me! Open studio HERE! November 25-26 (11-4 each day); Aurora Art and Design, daily until 12/24; Cooperstown Art Assoc. daily until 12/24; Ellis Hollow Community Fair, 12/10; December 10, Little Red Wagon at the Space at Greenstar. All material on this blog unless stated otherwise is copyright Gary Edward Rith 2016

Monday, October 3, 2011

UNmentionables and YOU

SO, once again, the wife is talking with her pal Zee, and the subject of UNMENTIONABLES comes up. Unmentionables is usually, well, undies or lingerie, right? Or like Maya Angelou's grandmother would say, as she and her brother headed out to the washtub in the yard for a bath "wash as far as possible, then wash possible".
But when you think about it, unmentionables could be anything, like politics, religion, family, your spouse's new leather boot fetish, ahem, etc etc etc.

What is your unmentionable story? When I think unmentionable I think "SEWAGE. I do NOT want to talk about sewage." So here is my sewage story.

Back when we lived in the woods of New Hampshire, we had a stretch, as you do, of weather below zero for a few weeks. When we flushed we didn't get no satisfaction! We had a septic tank out there somewhere, and a pipe leading from the house out to it, and, well, you know, what should only go OUT of the house wanted to COME BACK IN. We suspected freezing down the line somewhere, and the plumber came out. Friendly guy, but old and creaky. He was like "where is your septic tank?" and I waved vaguely at the side yard, covered with, no joke, 3 feet of snow. He was like "well, I have to get into the top, you need to find the opening. I'll be back after lunch" AND so, I started with the snow shovel, clearing an area about 8 X 10 feet of the snow, looking for approximate and unmarked spot where I KNEW THE TOP OF THE SEPTIC TANK WAS. The ground was frozen, and therefore, clearing the snow had been the easiest part of the job.
I used a pick of some kind, to hack through the first layers of ice and dirt, then started shoveling. Luckily, i did not have to shovel the whole 8 X 10 foot area, just about 6 X 10...and after 2 hours, I found the concrete top of the tank, and the plumber came back. I was more tired than in my whole life, 2-3 hours hard labor in my snowy yard, but that is not the unmentionable part of this story.

The plumber pops the lid open in 2 seconds, which is as it should be, then SLIPS ON THE ICE and his whole left leg, and nearly the rest of him, falls into my septic tank. Par for the course for a plumber, eh? I mean, why else would they charge 90 bucks or more an hour? They flippin' earn it....

ANYWAY, so the plumber gets himself and foot and all out of my septic tank--seemingly unconcerned about where half his body had just been and what was on his boots-- and he is peering around in there "oh, we didn't need to get into the top of the tank, I got something else I can try that should work" and I am gaping down into the hole, looking at what was, well, it had been mine, but I had given it up. I did not want to see it ever again, what was in my septic tank, I had said goodbye and good riddance long ago....

ANYWAY, in slow motion, just like his foot and leg slipping on the ice and falling into my demonic septic tank, I watch from several feet away as my shovel decides to...slowly...slowly but gathering speed, slide down the ice and into the gaping top of my septic tank, splashing into it with a loud and noisy PLOP.

The plumber looks at me, and says "you want your shovel back? I could probably fish it out if you have a rake" and I am like "NO NO! No problem!!!!!! Forget the shovel!" and the plumber replaces the top of my demonic septic tank and from under the house uses high power water to melt and dislodge ice in the outflow pipe, EASY and done in five minutes (why didn't he try that FIRST???) and I used ...my OTHER shovel...and filled back over the top of my septic tank, but put a large marker on top...just in case.....

PLEASE: tell us your very fascinating UNmentionables story down in comments!

16 comments:

cm said...

One time, at Girl Guide camp, there was a huge wind an rain storm that blew away half the tent and a lot of other things besides. Some of those other things ended up in a tree and remained there, unclaimed.

SLADE said...

I once had 2 husbands...at the same time. I highly recommend polyamorous relationships.

Unknown said...

And he fondly named his septic tank: The Black Hole.

It's where YOU DON'T want to get sucked into.

Michèle Hastings said...

*weak stomach warning*
many years ago in NH i had a cardinal that visited my bird feeder everyday. one day i found it dead near the feeder... a victim, i am certain, of my cat. my husband (now ex) picked it up with a shovel and threw it into the woods (we lived in the boonies too). 3 days later my parents are visiting. my dog loved my Dad and was sitting at his feet... the dog started to heave and threw up the whole cardinal onto the living room floor.

Gary's third pottery blog said...

oh NICE, regurgitated zombie cardinal!

soubriquet said...

Oh my.....

Thing is, in some of my life, I am that plumber. So I've got more stinky stories than you could shake a stick at.
I'll go away and try to select just one, before I comment.

Unknown said...

When George and I were first married we had to live with his parents till we got enough money to get our own place, anyway.....
The kitchen sink was plugged and George's Dad went to the hardware store and purchased this can of super dooper drain cleaner. It was a powerful blast of air in a can that supposedly could move an elephant if necessary....lol lol lol....
My Mohter In Law had a most beatiful soft yellow kitchen, real soft and pastel, and cheery. So good old Dad doesn't read the directions, he just puts it up to the dran and let it rip! hahahha! Well he didn't plug the other side of the sink and this stinking, filthy, greasy, smelly, slime squirted all over the kitchen, a geiser worthy of ole faithful! lol lol Black smelly goo, all over the ceiling, floor, dog, us, him, everything....well the drain was still clogged, and apparently he had broken a pipe...hahahha! The period of silence was priceless, the dog, Tiny rather loved the smelly goo, thought it was pretty neat....hahahhahaha! George's Mom, not so much! Then the digging outside was started......and the cleaning of the kitchen...what a mess!

Busy Bee Suz said...

Septic tanks make me want to hurl.

We were selling our baby furniture at a yard sale years ago....I brought a nice lady and her mom in the house to look at it.
While we were in the baby's room talking and such, my oldest (3 at the time) comes in the room with a box of condoms...she found them in a drawer and was just carrying them around the house.

I turned bright red!!!!

Gary's third pottery blog said...

OH SUZ! oh Maureen and george!
This is what I love about the internets: we can share our most impossibly private secrets with the WORLD!

Wep said...

I was at a business meeting where I was sitting with my back to a glass window. While I was sitting there, various clients kept walking up and standing behind me. Thinking that I was a great client, I didn't think anything of it.

After my meeting, my boss suggested we go grab some coffee. It was then he told me while my "unmentionables" were cute, perhaps I could pull my shirt down so that everyone didn't see them ;)

Kimberly said...

Unmentionables! Well I have many but I can recall one that's printable.

We had two dogs at one time, a golden retriever and a collie shephard. The CS was named 'roger'. My sister's son was a toddler then and very cute and talkative kid. He loved the two dogs and the dogs were always hanging around him. He often ran around w/o clothes in the summer and played in the trees and the field. The dogs were always with him.

My sister corraled him at the end of the day and told him to get in the car to go home. She asked him if he had to do 'poop' before they left and he said he had already done it. She asked when and he told her just recently and he'd done it under the porch. She asked him where with the idea of going to clean it up.. He said, "don't worry Ma... Roger ate it!"

red dirt girl said...

Ok. You asked for it .... I was a very YOUNG 19 yrs old and was living at home from college for the summer. My boyfriend, also living at his home for the summer, invited me to come over and go bike riding then out to dinner on a date. So I gathered up all my stuff and went over. We biked; it was fun. Then, when we got back to his parents' home, I wanted to take a shower to get ready for the 'dinner' portion of the date.

Ummm...errr... during my shower, the naughty boyfriend kept coming into the bathroom to 'take a peek.' I kept telling him to LEAVE because his parents were in the house. I decided the next time he tried to peek, I was going to tease him.

Sure enough, I heard the bathroom door open. I turned off the shower, put a towel over my face, opened the shower door and slowly raised the towel, cooing "PEEK-A-BOO" as I did .....

It wasn't my boyfriend. It was his DAD standing there at the door!!!!

I was mortified. I got dressed lickety-split, gathered up my things, ran down the stairs and got in my car and drove home. I never went out with that boyfriend again. I was THAT EMBARRASSED!

I STILL feel embarrassed when I think about it. But it IS pretty darn funny. The look on both of our faces was priceless!

xxx

soubriquet said...

So..... I was hired by a builder, along with another plumber, to install a new downstairs bathroom in a very upmarket house. The lady of the house was a thorough pain. She was always dressed and made-up as if she was expecting 'Vogue' to happen along for an impromptu photoshoot, everything in the house had to be just so.
Workmen were a nuisance. She wanted the house extension completed yesterday, but seemed intent on making it as difficult as possible, any sawing, drilling, hammering and she'd complain about the noise. We had fitted most of the bathroom, carrara marble, green granite, glass, and were ready to connect into the existing pipework. We warned her that the water was off for about twenty minutes, told her to not use any sinks, basins, showers, baths, toilets, washing machines etc until given the all-clear. She shrugged, unwilling to acknowledge an instruction from lowly people in work clothes. All was peaceful, I cut out the pipe section and was readying the t-joint, when there was a rumble in the pipe.....Oh yes. A rumble presaging a deluge. my colleague, busy chamfering the pipe end, was in for a direct hit. Fast as a brown bear in a salmon-river, he snatched something out of the stream. It was brown, and no salmon. When the lady came haughtily down the stairs, he stormed out and presented her with his catch....
"I think this is yours!"

Gary's third pottery blog said...

not a salmon.....OK THEN! And the shower scene, oh my!

Reverend Awesome said...

This sort of has to do with pee. So it's topical. It was Mardi Gras and the bathroom situation was less than desirable. I'm very much drunk, but somehow under control. It was an amazing drunk, a rare kinda rational insanity. I see there's the Ritz Carlton, surely they have restrooms for me to use.

My friend and I entered and were immediately asked if we were staying there. "Of course we are. We're in room 715." Holy shoot. They believed me! They directed me to the elevators (had to take 2 to get to my "room"). And yes, we took both elevators. All was well on the first one. Then the second one hits and I hear an Australian man say to his friend, "They just let anyone in this place." And I thought, "Th jig is up." but I just focused on the fact that I had to pee and MAINTAINED. Get to the bathroom, pee the best pee of my life. Go to wash my hands and dry them with actual towels! There were multiple size options! And so soft.

I've peed at a Ritz Carlton. But it's not unmentionable.

Jenn @ Juggling Life said...

I actually have a couple of sewage stories. Which is two more than I wish I had!

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I am a full-time studio potter, sculptor, and dog walker, married to superhawt Missus Tastycake.